Monday, November 18, 2013

Things are starting to fall into place for the first official Mobile Frame Zero Tournament, which will be held at the Denver Comic Con this upcoming summer (June 13-15). We've already secured a couple of sponsors for the tourney (which includes some cool prizes to give away as well), and I've been working with Josh to put together a set of rules for the tournament as well. As of right now, the tournament rules are as follows:

All participants must register their company (maximum of 8 frames) prior to the beginning of the event.

The frames in your company may not be reconfigured once registered (with SSRs being the only exception).

Before each match, each participant must choose a number of frames from their company to field. Once these frames are chosen, they cannot be changed for that match (except in the case of tied starting scores).

Terrain will be set up by tournament officials.

First and second round matches will be three player skirmishes, with the winner advancing. In the case of a tie, both players will advance to the next round. If there are ties, second and final round matches may consist of four players.

The final round will be a three player battle, with the winner taking first place and the remaining players taking second and third relative to their score.

That should give you a good idea of what we will be working with for the tourney (so those of you who like to get a good head start on things can get cracking on their companies now), but things may change slightly as we come closer to the event. Terrain and tables will be set up prior to the match starting so the only thing participants will need to bring will be frames, stations, dice, and rulers. Speaking of tables, Kreator Hobbies has kindly offered to supply gaming tables for the tournament. If you were out at Rocky Mountain Con a few weeks back, you got the chance to see one of their prototypes up close and personal. If not, You can take a look at their Kickstarter (which hasn't started quite yet) to get a good idea of what they will be putting together. Regardless of your game of choice, these tables are going to be absolutely sweet as they are completely modular and will be much more affordable than most dedicated gaming tables out there.

Not only has Kreator offered to supply these tables for the tournament, but they will be giving out a Gaming Table (type yet to be decided) to the grand prize winner! Also, all participants who reach the championship table will receive a custom piece of artwork of a frame of their choice from RyujinDX, who has done a number of pieces of artwork for the MFZ rulebook! Other prizes and goodies are still in the works, but chances are there will be something fun for everyone that plays in the tourney as well!

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

After playing a hefty amount of games in the last month or so, I've made a few observations that have changed my tactical thinking a bit. This "Tactics Talk" post is not a full in depth post about specific tactics like my Tactics101 posts, but a group of smaller points discussed in bite sized portions.

Defensive placement is vital. I know I've mentioned this before but its worth mentioning again. When placing your stations try to deny as much of the table as possible to your opponents. If you can make them place their frames/stations in vulnerable positions, you've made a huge step towards victory.

Playing as the secondary attacker seems to be the easiest position to play from. You don't have the score and placement disadvantages of the primary attacker, and you don't have the whole table gunning for you like the defender. However, your asset value is generally high enough to snatch the lead pretty easily, and you can manipulate your opponents a bit here and there to make sure you stay under the radar until you do.

The soldier loadout is arguably the best loadout in the game. Now this isn't to say that specialized builds aren't necessary or efficient, but a core of three or so soldiers makes an extremely effective backbone to a company. With one of every system, they tend to have really solid rolls for each action and don't stand out as much on the table either, making them low priority targets compared to that double arty double spotting frame over there.

Also, things are starting to fall into place for the first official MFZ tournament at the Denver Comic Con next summer. I'll have a more detailed update in the near future, but it looks like Mr Newman will be coming out to help run things as well as sign some books and we will have gaming tables by Kreator Hobbies for the tourney and possibly for the grand prize.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

This, my friends, is the first playtest ruleset for Mobile Frame Zero: Alpha Bandit. Before I go into any detail about the whole thing, Here's the link to download it. Now, I will warn you that the thing is only four pages long, and doesn't describe everything needed. But it gives you a really good idea of some of the mechanics that will be implemented in this MFZ Space Combat expansion.

There are a couple of really cool ideas, and a number of tidbits that are revealed through this playtest document. One of them being the fact that there will be frame companies in space. They hang out with your ships and can be "catapulted" to objectives and other ships to either capture them or do some damage. These frame companies can have an "Ace" which can be of any color except white (Red, Blue, Yellow, Green) and they all grant a d8 of that color and a special ability. How these will all play out is still a little fuzzy. but it should be really cool to see how these frames help shape the battlefield in the cold depths of space.

Another few things of note, the ruler for Alpha Bandit is 10 units long (instead of the standard 8 for Rapid Attack), and the click hinges actually are a part of the movement and maneuvering mechanics. For each maneuver point (your green die result) you can either increase or decrease your current movement by one, or click the hinge one click. Your ship must follow the ruler in it's movement. This means that ships will not be able to turn on a dime and will require some extra tactical thinking to get the most out of your positioning.

There isn't an official "scale" for the ships yet (at least if there is, Josh hasn't hinted at it yet). But from some of the stuff Soren has put together in the past for MFZ we can assume it'll be somewhere around stuff like this:

There is still a ton we don't know about Alpha Bandit, but it is awesome to see that the first "expansion" to MFZ is coming along. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this develops.